Quotes by B. F. Skinner

“We shouldnt teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.”

“The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.”

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”

“Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.”

“If youre old, dont try to change yourself, change your environment.”

“I did not direct my life. I didnt design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. Thats what life is.”

“The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.”

“Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.”

“The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.”

“The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.”

“A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.”

“Give me a child and Ill shape him into anything.”

“Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate the subject matters.”

“The man who doesnt read good books has no advantage over the man who cant read them”

“Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.”

I will be dead in a few months. But it hasnt given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.

A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.

We shouldnt teach great books we should teach a love of reading.

I wont say that Im an agnostic, since agnosticism maintains that one cannot know... but Im not averse to the idea of some intelligence or some organizing force that set up the initial conditions of the universe in such a way that ultimately generated stars, planets and life.

If youre old, dont try to change yourself, change your environment.